Cleaning House
by Densharr
Summary: It's that time of year again!  The inhabitants of the Tower are getting ready for Spring Cleaning, but there's always one reluctant Titan...


Spring Cleaning.

If there was a non-meat-related phrase that Beast Boy hated more in the world, he had yet to find it. It wasn't that he _hated_ cleaning; on the contrary, he didn't mind it all. It was his animal half that disliked it so intensely.

The animals inside of his head didn't like sleeping in a clean room. It made them feel too open, too exposed to be able to sleep comfortably. Without fail, the morning after spring cleaning his room was as messy as it had been the previous week.

Robin had woken him up this morning with a slightly maniacal grin on his face. Beast Boy sighed as he remembered that encounter...

- - - oOo - - -

"_Beast Boy! Do you know what today is?"_

"_Um... Thursday?"_

"_Well... yes. But the answer that I was looking for was March 21__st__. And do you know what that is?"_

"_The Spring Equiluxe? No, wait, that was yesterday..."_

_Dropping his jaw slightly in shock, Robin managed to recover before his green friend could notice. "No, it's the first day of spring. And that means..." Robin motioned down the hallway to his friends. Cyborg and Starfire both ran to Beast Boy's door, wearing pink aprons and holding cleaning supplies._

"_SPRING CLEANING!"_

_With a look of horror on his face, Beast Boy had slammed his door and dived onto his bed, hidden beneath his blanket._

- - - oOo - - -

He had gone for the next few hours listening to the sounds of cleaning going on through the Tower, with the occasional vacuuming sounds making his hackles rise. When a hand knocked on his door, he moved to open it, expecting it be one of his teammates, trying to engage him in cleaning, either of his own room or of the Tower in general.

Much to his surprise, he saw his dark teammate, the purple haired sorceress Raven, with a sour look on her face. His mouth dropped in pure shock as she shouldered her way past him _into his room_.

"But... bwuh?"

"Can it, Beast Boy. Robin gave me the option of either helping you or helping to clean the containment chamber where we held Plasmus last month after Slade pumped him full of stimulants."

Both Titans shuddered in memory of the giant ooze monster and of their titanic battle with him. They'd had to keep him in containment for nearly six hours after they'd defeated him, waiting for the stimulants to wear off.

"Given that Plasmus's stench apparently ferments if left too long... I'd just as soon leave that task to Robin and the others. So I've been given four hours to help you clean your room. By which I mean four hours of me meditating while you presumably clean. I mean, none of us have actually seen any results from your 'cleaning' efforts before."

"Bwuh... Alright. Just... don't get in my way too much, okay?"

Raven tried (unsuccessfully) to hold back her scoff. Arching her brow at the glare he attempted to inflict on her, she shook it off and began levitating while reciting her mantra.

Beast Boy turned back to the mess formally known as his room. He began to prepare the first of many loads of laundry, placing the darks away from the whites and colors. He knew the others didn't think much of his 'cleanliness', but the truth of the matter was that his animal instincts left him alone for the most part at night if they felt comfortable. He found himself waking up in strange places less and less often the more the room saturated itself with his own body odour. Like an animal in a familiar den or warren, the scent was comforting. He knew that the others found this trait disgusting; Cyborg's obvious glee at the scent of his socks non-withstanding.

He'd freely admit that he found it slightly annoying how everybody assumed he was a slob for this reason. He didn't want to admit the truth to his teammates. He knew that they didn't view him as an animal, more of a human that could transform into animals- and that's how he liked it.

Once, he had hated how much his actions had been influenced by his animal instincts. With a grimace of pain, he remembered a memory from his youth, not long after he had been... saved from Sakutia. They hadn't had modern conveniences like bathrooms in Upper Lamumba, so they had just used the forest surrounding them. His father had found him 'marking' his territory and had brought him aside and explained it. He could resist those urges now, thank God, but there was always another whole host of issues.

Then there were his enhanced senses. He'd never brought particular attention to them, but his senses of smell, eyesight and particularly hearing were much keener than a human's, even one who tried to hone theirs, like Robin. Being near Robotman and Cyborg had actually been physically painful at first, hearing the tiny servos adjusting to even the slightest movement. Add that to Cyborg's advanced cooling systems... he'd gotten used to the persistent headaches until he had slowly adjusted to it.

Taking a deep breath through his nose, he basked in the odours surrounding him from his room. There was the faintest traces of the pizza grease on a plate stacked somewhere on his dresser from last month's pizza party with the Titans East, the smell of the detergent still wafting from his sheets and a hint of Mumbo Jumbo's magic on a dirty uniform. For some odd reason, Mumbo's magic always smelt like a cross between cotton candy and old man. Beast Boy wrinkled his nose as he caught the scent that the Boy Wonder had left behind earlier that morning; sweat, his natural musk and cheap hair gel.

As he came across the strongest scent yet, he tried and failed to conceal a grin spreading across his face. Old parchment, lavender and the faintest hint of smoke. _Rae..._ Beast Boy would never admit it, but her scent was one of the reasons that he kept cajoling his teammate. There was just something so... tantalizing, so calming about her natural smell that he couldn't help but love it.

Raven had been trying to meditate, but the emotions pouring off Beast Boy were more intense than usual. First a hint of irritation, then a surge of anger, followed by a flood of emotional pain. Then such a deep, calming feeling that she had to crack an eye open to make sure he wasn't meditating. He was standing in the middle of his floor, eyes closed, just... breathing, apparently. Maybe it was his close proximity, or the fact that there was no one else around, that made him stand out so much.

_You know that's not the reason, Raven._

_Oh great._ You're _back._

_I never left, Raven. Just admit it. Admit why you're always so happy when it's him that comforts you, why you never kill him or maim him even though you constantly threaten him with it. How he touches your hear-_

_Don't say that. It's not true._

_Oh Raven, when will you admit to it? You know that it's not healthy to deny your emotions. Remember when you watched Wicked Scary?_

_It's not healthy to indulge my emotions, either. Ask light bulbs, teacups and other assorted objects everywhere._

_That's only because you deny us at every turn. You can't blame us for trying to get out at every chance. You're caging us, and we didn't do anything wrong._

_So if I let you... out more often, I'll be able to control you better?_

_No, you won't be able to_ control _us better. You'll be able to co-exist with us, instead of against us. But we know that we can't expect you to totally let loose. Just a little bit at a time. Indulge us._

_...I'll think about it._

_That's all that we'd ever expect from you._

Raven felt the presence sink deeper into her mind after that parting remark. Looking around, he saw that she'd been meditating for a long time, long enough for Beast Boy to have finished clearing off his floor and stacking his laundry in a pair of overflowing hampers in the corner.

Beast Boy had finished cleaning the floor, and had now moved onto his desk. Tossing half finished sketches into a box, he sighed and cursed at his pack-ratish tendencies. He couldn't help it – whenever he moved to throw something out, he felt as if he'd totally regret it at a later date. He heard Raven shuffling around behind him as she finished meditating. He didn't bother turning around as he heard her telling him that the four hours was up, and she was returning to her room. At the wave of his hand, he felt the air pressure decompress for a second as she teleported back to her room. Bringing a random shirt to the mountains of laundry, he got the sense that there was something missing, but shook it off. He let out a sigh of relief as he was finished enough for the Boy Blunder to get off his back about cleaning. He wondered what Cyborg was up to now, and if he was free to get his butt kicked at a round of Mega Monkeys Four...

- - - oOo - - -

Raven returned to her own room, a heavy blush visible upon her face. She had decided to indulge a few of her emotions at the last second, just to see if they'd keep Affecti-the emotion's deal.

Looking down at the item in her hand and letting out the slightest giggle, she braced herself for hearing the crack of a light, or the soft implosion of a pillow. To her surprise and pleasure, there were no such sounds.

Bringing the soft item to her face, she took a deep inhalation of it, revelling in its musk. It smells of dusk... or maybe starlight.

Before she could contemplate it any further, she heard the alarm go off. Sighing to herself, she placed the item down on her bed before she phased herself through the floor to head off to the Commons Room.

In her room, a single worn black tee shirt with a fuchsia Doom Patrol symbol emblazoned across it sat on her bed.

A/N: Now including alternate character perceptions! I actually view the BB part as my personal canon, for the most part, and the Raven bit is something that I've been playing around with.

Against common perceptions, the Equinox is when the tilt of the Earth is faced neither towards nor away from the Sun. It's the Equiluxe when day and night are both roughly 12 hours.


End file.
